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Publishing giant Elsevier buys research collaboration tool Mendeley

In a move to strengthen its digital presence, academic publishing group Elsevier has bought London-based research and collaboration platform Mendeley. Financial terms weren’t disclosed but the Financial Times has reported that the publisher paid a sum of £45m (about €52.7m) for the acquisition.

Mendeley – started in 2008 by German founders Dr. Victor Henning, Jan Reichelt and Paul Föckler – is a cloud-based research management tool for students and academics. The platform allows users to generate citations, annotate and organise articles as well as collaborate with colleagues on projects.

The new deal means that Mendeley will have access to Elsevier’s resources, partnerships and reach in the professional R&D community. This will allow the company to focus on enhancing the user experience and developing new features rather than succumbing to pressures to monetise right away.

“Mendeley is an innovative company with great culture, talent and collaborative spirit, and we will keep it that way,” said Olivier Dumon, Managing Director of Academic and Government Research Markets at Elsevier.

“Not only that, but together we intend to scale and evolve Mendeley in ways that benefit the entire research community. We will provide greater access to content, data, and analytics tools to Mendeley’s users and its flourishing third-party app ecosystem, all of which will enable us to increase both Elsevier’s and Mendeley’s engagement with researchers,” he added.